


The nuns, the onions, and you

by AlbieGeorge



Category: Cricket RPF
Genre: A bit of injury woe, Fluff, Honourable mention of Woakesy, Humour (attempted), In the land where Brinn is not a thing, It is clear that I am not over Finny's injury yet, M/M, Minor Angst, Niche ship, Realistic hospital wake-up prompt, Shipped by Middlesex fans and actual Tim Murtagh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 15:33:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13103202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlbieGeorge/pseuds/AlbieGeorge
Summary: Finny is injured again, and finds himself facing not only surgery, but also his complicated relationship with Tim Murtagh.  And he's pretty much coping, until the painkillers intervene.





	The nuns, the onions, and you

**Author's Note:**

> This ridiculous work of nonsense was prompted by a conversation on Tumblr, based on the following favourite trope:
> 
> "My favorite trope is when two characters are in love and neither has admitted their feelings to each other yet, and then The One That’s Not In Denial™ gets hurt and The One That Is In Denial™ starts freaking out and suddenly is not in denial anymore."
> 
> I ended up being prompted to write a waking up in hospital scene which was somewhat medically accurate and a whole lot less glamorous. And then this came out, because Finny is goofy and of course he would go back to dear old Murts to get him through. I took a few liberties, medically speaking, but hopefully it tickles your funny bone.
> 
> This is top to toe fluff, with a bit of mild angst and injury woe. A couple of swears, dotted around. And it got kind of long. Sorry about that. I'm aware that this is a niche ship, but they ship themselves, for goodness sake. (And honestly, I don't think there's any denial on Murts's part, but I had to fulfill the prompt!)

"I'm fine, mum... no, really.  My friends are here, I've got the op to concentrate on, I've got Netflix and a ton of coffee shops near the flat, and I never got rid of those extra long crutches so I'll be able to get out and about."

The thought of putting the extra long crutches into the back of a cupboard after his last surgery, hoping that keeping them would ward off further injuries, caused the sad ache in Steven Finn's chest to intensify.  He winced, and tried to let out his sigh away from the phone receiver.

"We can come home, darling.  It's just a holiday."  The distant sound of his mum's voice, full of concern, made Steve's breath catch in his throat.

"No."  He said definitively, before his voice could wobble. "You haven't been away for a year.  I'll honestly be fine.  I'll call you.  Every day."

There was a silence, then Steve thought he heard a resigned sigh.  The pain in his chest crescendoed.

"OK, sweetheart.  But if you change your mind, you just call us.  Any time of the day or night."

"OK."  Steve said, opening his eyes wide and looking up at the ceiling to stave off tears.

A brief silence.  Quiet goodbyes.  Then the empty flat.  It was one of those wonderfully clear winter days in London.  Still, bright, bone piercingly cold.

Steve stood, achy from the flight and the limping and the stark reality of being injured again, and winced his way into the kitchen.  He absentmindedly started making a cup of tea, trying not to think, especially about the heartfelt text of support from Woakesy that he couldn't bring himself to answer because just reading it made him teary.  He hesitated, then put his phone down on the counter.  It was the middle of the night in Australia, after all, he told himself.  The silence of the flat was heavy.  He felt a pressure in his head, the dark cauldron of things he was trying not to think about bubbling ominously.  He should have known that perfect few weeks was too good to be true.  The phonecall out of the blue, another chance offered and accepted with a smile so big it made his face hurt.  Rushing to the wardrobe to check his England suit hadn't been eaten by moths, gleefully accepting the slaps on the back and welcome backs from the lads, and then the bright blue sky of Australia and life was good.  And then a sudden, blinding moment of pain in his knee and it had all come down to this again.

The silence was broken by the harsh buzz of the front door.  Steve jumped unpleasantly, not expecting a visitor today.  He ambled towards the video entry phone.  The camera had always been mounted just a little bit too high, so all he could see was a shock of dark hair and two thick caterpillar-like eyebrows, but Steve instantly knew who it was, a smile spreading across his face as he pressed a button and the door to the apartment block clicked open.

Tim.

In the same way that Emma was distracted by the charms of the handsome Frank Churchill, only to find that he was secretly seeing someone else, Steve had returned from an international tour several years earlier, brooding and gloomy over Stuart Broad's endless cavorting, to discover his own Mr Knightley.  Tim had quickly sensed Steve's disquiet, and arrived at his front door with a bottle of whiskey he'd obtained from that one mysterious Irish relative that allowed him to pull on the green ODI shirt, and a bag of Nandos so big that he could barely see over it.  Several hours later, drunk on chicken and whiskey and each other's company, they had moved into Steve's bedroom, and wholeheartedly gone to the place that they only joked about on Twitter.

The next morning, before Steve could even reach over to the bedside table for his glasses, a blurry Tim Murtagh-shaped object had said a series of panic-stricken words about having a family and not being gay and oh my God I'm sorry and he'd shut the front door so hard as he ran out of it that it had bounced back awkwardly on its hinges and left a mark on the wall.

That door had been a metaphor for their relationship, in hindsight.  Tim trying to shut it, but not succeeding, Steve a passive and wounded spectator.  A few weeks of awkward conversation in the changing rooms were followed inevitably by the cautious resumption of banter, then a breathless reconciliation.  Muttered apologies against lips, sex that made Steve weak at the knees, followed by another freak out.  The radio silence each time was incrementally shorter and easier to bear.  Steve wished Tim could just appreciate their time together for what it was.  Steve wasn't sure himself what it was, but he knew that he appreciated it, the warmth of his feelings for his old friend bringing colour to his cheeks as Tim ascended the stairs.  He looked at the mark on the wall, and then shifted a scarf hanging from his coat rack to cover it.

In an instant he was there, all sympathy and smiles, wrapping the taller man in a tight hug.  The chill of the outside seeped pleasantly through Steve's clothes, the smell of cold air in Tim's hair as he pressed his face into Steve's neck.

Steve squirmed. "Your nose is cold."

Tim hung on tight.  "Hey leave it alone.  It's just intimidated by your nose.  Give it some reassurance and it'll warm up."

Steve laughed, something he realised he hadn't done in a while, and walked back to the kitchen to put on a second cup of tea as they settled back into their usual playful teasing with practised ease.  With Tim's arrival, things started settling back into their normal places.  He'd get through this, with Murts and his family and Nandos and jokes about the size of his nose, just as he got through everything else.

"Chin up old boy, it makes your nose look smaller."

Steve hit Tim with a tea towel.

The next day, as he sat in a blue and white hospital gown which barely covered his modesty and took a faux cheerful pre-op photo for Instagram, Steve was glad that Tim had insisted on coming with him.  He peered down at the arrow pointing to his injured knee and swallowed nervously.

"Do you reckon if I drew an arrow on your face they could sort that out, too?"

Tim had returned from the hospital cafe with a coffee and a pastry which was already missing a large bite.  Even the sight of the crumbs around his mouth were making Steve hungry.

"Schorry." said Tim through a second mouthful of pain au raisin.

"S'OK." said Steve with a shrug.  Their eyes met for just a moment too long as Steve fretted and Tim chewed, so that they both jumped when the anaesthetist knocked on the door, cheerily announcing that it was time to go to theatre.  Tim instantly deposited the remains of his breakfast on the bedside table and launched into a hug so tight it took what little breath Steve had away.

"Go well, mate." Tim muttered into Steve's neck.

"See you on the other side." Steve replied shakily.

As he lay flat on his back in the anaesthetic room, a mask pressed to his face, counting down from 10 to oblivion, he thought of that look.  And then everything went hazy, and there was the smell of fresh pastries and a hazelnut latte, and then he couldn't remember the number eight and a great black nothingness came comfortingly to greet him.

\---

_Hundred and nine, hundred and ten, hundred and eleven..._

His phone buzzed.

_Argh, no, can't stop counting on Nelson._

Tim finished counting the row of squares on the hospital lino floor at 128.

_Oh, that'll do._

He checked his phone.  Gus, asking how Steve was.  He fired back a text that he didn't know yet, before realising that this was probably longer than it would usually take to operate on a knee, and that was why Gus was checking in.  A sudden whoosh of anxiety made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

What if something was wrong?  It was just routine knee surgery, but what if something bad had happened and Steve was in bother, and he needed...

_Why would he need you?_ Tim thought, ruefully.  _All you've done is reject him._

He put his head in his hands.  What a mess.  He'd had flirtations with men before, back in his early county days.  But they were always just that - flirtations.  A bit of fun, a lot of casual sex; he'd been single back then.  But then he'd moved to Middlesex and married his girlfriend and suddenly there was this goofy, lanky kid nearly 10 years his junior who had loped into his life and taken the piss out of the speed of his bowling.  And they'd become inseparable, the odd couple of Lord's, except they weren't a couple.  Until that one night when Tim had gone over unannounced after Steve had returned home from tour moping over that blond idiot Broad, a weird sensation he now knew to be jealously bubbling away in his gut.  And the sex had been unexpected but incredible, and Tim's subsequent freak out had been expected and terrible.  And Steve had been kind.  And Tim had been an idiot.

_Shit._

And then he'd let it happen again, and again.  Steve was like a drug he couldn't give up.  A drug that made him all giggly and not very sensible.  Like a cheeky slurp of the winners' champagne on an empty stomach after a full day's play.

He'd caught feelings.

_Fuck._

And now something might be wrong.  Tim got up, and walked to the door of the theatre block, thinking about pressing the intercom, but shying away at the last minute.

_Hello, yes, it's me, Tim.  You've got my best friend in there.  Tall, weird hair like the crest of an exotic bird.  Big nose, that's the fella.  You see, we've been having sex.  I mean, quite regularly.  With all the trimmings.  Like kissing and foreplay and staying the night.  I know.  Foreplay?  Me?  I surprise myself sometimes.  Except I always freak out and run away and now you might have bloody killed him and please can you let me in, or maybe just tell me he's not dead on the operating table before I have the chance to..._

The door opened, and a woman in blue surgical scrubs came out.  Tim tried not to look like he'd been deep in conversation with a closed door about the nature of his feelings for his best mate.  She introduced herself and told him he could see Mr Finn although he hadn't quite woken up from the anaesthetic yet, and as Tim walked into the recovery room he tried not to betray the fact that his knees had gone a bit wobbly with relief.

There was a stern-looking middle aged woman standing at the end of Steve's bed, who Tim assumed to be his doctor.  The doctor frowned.

"He's not coming round quite as quickly as we'd expect him to."

She went back, face inscrutable, to consulting the chart on the large white board at the foot of Steve's bed as the bottom quietly dropped out of Tim's stomach again.

"I'm sorry, _what_?!" he squeaked, at a register he wondered if only dogs could hear.

The doctor looked up, blue eyes inquisitive over her narrow, rimless glasses.

"Are you his...?"

"Uh, friend." Tim blurted out, perhaps a little too loudly.  _Best friend.  With...occasional  benefits?_ No, that implied he didn't have feelings, that he didn't... _Nope, don't go there, Murts.  These are people, not doors._

Tess, the nurse in the blue scrubs who was now definitely wondering if Tim and Steve were lovers, looked at him with interest.

_Wait a second, he's not coming round?  WHAT TO DO YOU MEAN HE'S NOT COMING ROUND?_

Tim turned anxiously to look at Steve.  He wanted to reach out and grab him and shake him until he woke up and told Tim to stop being such a wally.  Instead, despite the oxygen tubing tracing a path across his face, Steve looked supremely peaceful, as he always did when he was sleeping.

_Argh._ Sleeping Steve was not a helpful thought.

A machine alarmed.  Tim started painfully, panic clawing at his gut, his mouth suddenly dry.

Tess looked unconcerned, and quickly moved to a small machine on a stand that looked like part of an Amstrad from the early 90s.  She looked at Tim, picking up on his anxiety.

"The bag of fluid's finished." she said.  "I'll put up the next one."  A reassuring smile.  The feeling of impending doom ebbed ever so slightly.

The doctor was talking again.  "Do you happen to know if he's sensitive to anaethetics or painkillers?  He didn't mention any problems..."

Tim cast his mind back to the last time he'd visited Steve in hospital, or at home following one of his endless disgusting fast bowler's toenail procedures.  He smiled, despite himself.

"He gets very silly on painkillers."

Tim allowed himself to entertain the memory of Steve getting wedged between his sofa and the wall when he was last injured, having aimed to sit on the arm of the sofa and missed.  He had pouted at Tim, who was powerless to help him with the giggles, before falling asleep with his face against the wall with a rapidity that was both endearing and alarming.  Tim had roused him, freed him, and positioned him in a vaguely organised heap on the sofa, before Steve had slurred that he blamed 'the loopy juice', laughed a little too loudly and for a little too long, and then fallen into a sleep that lasted mid-way into the following day.

"I mean, he's a very silly man, but more silly than normal."

He became aware that the doctor and Tess were looking at him very seriously.

"Err, he just gets really, scarily sleepy and talks nonsense."

"What drug was this, do you know?" The doctor asked.

Tim squinted and thought back to the bottle, the 'loopy juice', that Steve had gestured to, the top poking out of the paper pharmacy bag with his name printed on it.  The memory was tinged with regret.  There'd been another kiss when he'd finally come round, another subsequent rejection.  A brown bottle, slightly sticky around the neck from the clumsy extraction of its contents.   A pair of sad brown eyes.  He pushed the intrusive memory aside while trying to focus on the name of the drug.  The label on the bottle was orange and white, and carried stark warnings about driving and operating heavy machinery.  He thought of Steve operating a combine harvester while massively stoned on painkillers and beat back the laugh of the rising hysteria that he always felt when something frightening was happening.

_This is not the time for laughing, Murtagh.  I know you like to giggle at funerals but..._   His stomach lurched.  _Poor choice of words._

He took a deep breath and looked at the doctor.  "Morphine."

"Oh." said the doctor.  "Well, that explains it.  Good."  She turned to Tess, and gave a series of instructions Tim didn't understand.  She made a few notes on the big chart.

"Is everything OK?" Tim said, the worried feeling renewing its pressure on his gut.

"Yes." said the doctor. "We'll just give him less painkillers, and hopefully he'll wake up when they wear off."

And with that, she was gone.  Tess smiled at Tim reassuringly.  Tim tried to smile back, but was worried he came off more maniacal than friendly, and so he rubbed a hand over his face and looked down at his knees, one of which was jiggling away nervously.

_Hopefully?  Hopefully he'll wake up?_ He looked over again at Steve.  _Hopefully he'll wake up so I can slap that great long noodle of a man into the middle of next week for scaring me like this._   He felt the sudden strong ache of tears welling up, and clenched his jaw in the effort to control them.

_Hopefully he'll wake up so I can tell him I'm an idiot._

_Shit, Steve, please wake up._

Tim sat quietly at Steve's bedside and wrung his hands for what felt like hours, as Steve slept with abandon.  Occasionally, Tess would come by and fill in his chart, or halt a machine that was booping more intensely that the others.

Tim eventually summoned up the courage to lay a hand on Steve's forearm.

"Come on mate, rise and shine." he said uselessly.

Steve frowned with his eyes still closed and made a noise akin to the sound of stepping into a wet cow pat on a country walk.

"Steve?" Tim squeaked, ignoring the weird noises Steve had continued to make as he gurgled himself into consciousness.

"WAH!" Steve exclaimed loudly, his eyes popping open as he grabbed Tim's t-shirt by the collar and pulled him forwards with remarkable force for a man who had been unconscious moments before.  Tim could see Tess out of the corner of his eye, attending to a patient whose machines were suddenly alarming all over the place.  He looked back at Steve who was looking around the room with an expression somewhere between wonder and horror.

"Timmy," he whispered conspiratorially, "Why are all of these nuns here, and why do they keep offering me onions?"

Tim blinked.

"I mean... I don't even like onions."

Tim frowned.

"Everyone likes onions." The words were out of his mouth before he'd had the chance to think about them.

_Not, 'Steve, it's so good to see you, I thought you were dying!', not 'Steve, I've been such a prat, I'm so sorry', not 'Steve, I've got feelings I should really tell you about right now before you fall off this earth unexpectedly'.  No, you managed 'Everyone likes onions.'_

Steve looked confused.

"What ARE onions, anyway?"

_To be fair, you were probably cockblocked by the nuns, there.  Not to mention their onions._

"Mate, I think you're hallucinating.  There are no nuns."

Steve looked dismayed.

"Oh."  A long moment passed, and Steve let go of Tim's shirt.  With a great look of concentration, he reached out both hands and put them around Tim's face, a look of satisfaction crossing his own face like he'd just found a bit of movement on an unresponsive pitch.

"I... Tim, I want..."

Tim froze.  Steve got a bit truth serum-y on painkillers, too.  All of a sudden he wasn't sure if, now the moment of truth had come, he wanted to know what Steven Finn wanted.  But Steve was looking at him so plaintively that he felt obliged to at least hear it.  He took in a deep breath.

"What do you want, Steve?"  Tim took Steve's right hand in his, partly because his thumb was dangerously near Tim's mouth.

"I want...  I really want a wee."

The laughed that erupted from Tim was coloured with a hefty dollop of relief, but when he saw Steve looking hurt to the point of tears at his laughter, he stopped abruptly, and called Tess.

"It's OK, Mr Finn," she said calmly after he had explained his plight.  "You have a catheter, so you can just let it go, it's fine."

Steve's eyes widened.

"You want me to wee in the bed?"

Tess chuckled. "No, it'll go into the bag.  Down here."  She gestured to the side of the bed, unseeable to Steve, where the catheter bag was hooked onto the bed frame.

"You want me to wee in YOUR BAG?"

Tess heroically kept her cool as Tim's shoulders shook with laughter.  Steve looked appalled.

"I could never wee in your bag..." he said in a very small voice.

"No, Mr Finn, it's not my bag, it's the catheter bag.  You have a tube in your bladder.  It's attached to a bag.  So you don't have to worry about where your wee will go."

"Oh."  Steve looked chastened, which triggered a pang of regret for the tears of mirth Tim was wiping from his eyes.

The chastened look was soon replaced by the unmistakable yet indefinable expression of a man doing a wee.  Or, more accurately in this case, a very drunk man with a catheter thinking he's doing a wee.  Tim smiled fondly at Steve, as Tess went back to the nurses' station.

"Better?"

Steve nodded, but then the colour drained from his face.

"What is it?" Tim asked.  Worry niggled anew.

"Tim. I just WEED in front of the NUNS."

Tim guffawed. "Mate, the nuns aren't real. You're high as a kite on morphine. We're at the hospital, remember."

Steve looked at him seriously, processing.

"Are you real?" He asked, eyes suddenly brimming with tears.

"Yes mate." He sighed and squeezed the hand he hadn't realised he was still holding. "Unfortunately, I'm very real."

"Don't unfortunately. " said Steve ungrammatically but sincerely. "I'm not sure what I'd do if you disappeared with the nuns. And the onions." A tear rolled over the precipice of his cheekbone.

Tim's heart did a small somersault in his chest.

"Are the nuns gone?" he asked, looking round before he could catch himself.

"No." Steve replied. "And frankly I think they disapprove. Which is a bit unenlightened, to be honest. Considering they're nuns." Steve stopped talking, sniffed and smiled weakly.

Heart pounding in his chest, Tim leant in and planted a chaste but sincere kiss on Steve's lips. "Stop crying, please." he muttered against them.

Steve grinned and obliged, the wild mood swings of a man high on a cocktail of drugs in full force. "The nuns are scandalised."

"Good." Said Tim.

"I don't think I'm getting any onions."

"You don't like onions. "

"Yes I do." Steve looked confused. "Everyone likes onions."

\---

When Tim returned that evening, he was faintly horrified to find Steve perched on the edge of the bed, fully clothed, staring intently at the wall.

The nurse smiled cheerfully and handed him a bag of medicines, a handful of dressings and a leaflet that gave instructions on what to do if Steve started coughing up blood when he got home.

_Holy shit._

"But you can't leave him with me... look at him!" Tim gestured a little too wildly and almost dislodged a bottle of antibacterial hand gel from the wall. "He's like a newborn baby. A 6 foot 8 newborn baby."

Another smile from the nurse.  Reassuring.  Polite.  Definitive.  Steve was fine.  They tried a different painkiller, and while he was less disorientated, the hallucinations remained.  He just needed to sleep it off in a familiar environment, she said, and before he knew it, he was helping Steve into the back of his car and reassuring him that no, the elderly lady crossing the road outside the hospital didn't have tentacles for arms.

Compliant and tired-eyed, Steve had watched him intently and trustingly as Tim negotiated him out if his t-shirt and into bed.  Steve's cheeks were flushed and he shifted restlessly.  Tim convinced him to drink a glass of water and take a couple of paracetamol, before leaving the room and turning out the light.

Half an hour later, he passed the door to Steve's bedroom, on his way to the spare room having texted his wife that Steve was a mess, and he needed to stay.  He heard a raspy intake of breath, shakily exhaled, then a quiet "Oh God..."

Tim flicked the light on.  Steve lay on his back, sheets and covers balled in both fists, eyes tightly shut.  He opened his eyes when he realised Tim was there.

"Why do I keep seeing things, Tim?" he asked.  His voice was sad, exhausted.

Tim sighed, and did what instinct had told him to do the whole time.  Flicking the light back off, he lay down on the bed and snuggled up to Steve's body, resting his head on Steve's right shoulder.  Long limbs enveloped him instantly, naturally.  Tim examined his feelings in the dark.  There was no panic, no need to escape, just the warmth of Steve's skin against his.

"It's OK, Steve, whatever you're seeing, I'll fight it for you.  Even the nuns.  I'll throw cricket balls at them."

"The speed you throw cricket balls, I don't think that'd do much." Tim could tell Steve was smiling.  "Thanks, though."

\---

Steven Finn could have sworn that cracking open his eyes made an audible creak.  His mouth was dry and his tongue felt like the top bit of the scrubbing sponge he did the washing up with.  The dull pain in his knee that had been a constant for the last week or so had been replaced with a sharper one, and he became aware of the pressure of bandages around his injured limb.  His head pounded so hard that he could see his own pulse in his peripheral vision as he stared at the ceiling.  His ceiling.

_Wait a minute._

He was supposed to be at the hospital.  Why was he at home?  All he had were vague memories of nuns and onions and Tim Murtagh's disembodied head floating about like a balloon and trying to grab it with his hands.

More worryingly, there was a dull, heavy weight down the entire right side of his body, and he found he couldn't move his right arm, like it was pinned to the bed.

_Oh my God I've had a stroke._

Steve raised his head and looked across for his phone, pulse thumping painfully at his temples, only to realise that he couldn't move his right arm because it _was_ pinned to the bed.  Tim lay along the length of his body, head on his right shoulder and a hand on his chest, right over his heart.  Steve watched Tim's hand move slightly up and down with the rise and fall of his breathing, and wondered what on earth had happened between the hospital anaesthetic room and here that had brought Tim Murtagh back into his bed.  His head swam a little at the mental effort, and he both cursed and thanked the painkillers.  They must have conjured his irresistible alter ego Stoned Steve from that little bottle of morphine that he'd thrown away with tears in his eyes after another time he and Tim had kissed and Tim had freaked out and run a mile.  Steve sighed deeply at the bittersweet memory, Tim's hand warm and heavy on his chest.  He closed his eyes, the last traces of opiate wrapping their tendrils around his brain, luring him back to sleep.  He could have sworn, as he descended back into the warm pool of unconsciousness, that he felt Tim shift against his body and raise his head.  He waited for the inevitable cool air of the absence of Tim against his right side. He waited for Tim to flee, for the door to bang shut, for the mark on the wall to grow in definition and size.  Instead he felt a kiss planted on his collarbone, and the head rest back into place.

_That's weird._  He thought contentedly, ignoring the giant spider ridden by a clown that pottered across the view behind his eyelids.


End file.
